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Ralph Nader on Iraq and Foreign Policy
On Iraq, Ralph Nader supports the rapid and responsible withdrawal of US military forces, civilian military contractors, and US corporate interests from Iraq.
"We want to have a responsible six-month withdrawal of the US military and corporate occupation, and an internationally supervised election, so that the Iraqi people don't feel that they're facing a permanent military occupation and the control of their oil resources and of public government. If they feel that, the majority of the Iraqis are going to support the insurgency. They're not going to distance themselves from the insurgency."
NPR, "Justice Talking" Dean-Nader Debate Jul 9, 2004
"There’s got to be much more aggressive moves by Congress, maybe reflected in Congressman Jim McGovern’s bill, which will deal with the appropriations process and protect the soldiers, as they withdraw. If we don’t withdraw on a timetable, our military and corporate occupation of Iraq, including the oil industry, the bottom will never fall out of the insurgency."
Retired Army Maj. General Paul D. Eaton said the post-invasion effort in Iraq is about 60,000 troops short of what it needs for success and that the Army "is in terrible shape," lacking proper equipment and resources. President Bush should never have invaded Iraq, but whenever troops are deployed they should be at levels which are necessary to protect the civilian population--an obligation military occupiers are required, under international law, to fulfill.
Open letter by Ralph Nader and Kevin Zeese Nov 2, 2006
In an article called "Defining Victory Downward: No, the surge is not a success," columnist Michael Kinsley exposed the fatuous standards of comparison used by Bush and took his readers to standards back in 2003. Kinsley observed how Bush spouts success against conflicts and conditions that never existed before March 2003. There were no Al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq, no large scale sectarian carnage.
On Iraq, Ralph Nader supports the rapid and responsible withdrawal of US military forces, civilian military contractors, and US corporate interests from Iraq.
"We want to have a responsible six-month withdrawal of the US military and corporate occupation, and an internationally supervised election, so that the Iraqi people don't feel that they're facing a permanent military occupation and the control of their oil resources and of public government. If they feel that, the majority of the Iraqis are going to support the insurgency. They're not going to distance themselves from the insurgency."
NPR, "Justice Talking" Dean-Nader Debate Jul 9, 2004
"The way you get mainstream Iraqis to knock the bottom out of the resistance is to get rid of the occupation. It's the occupation that's breeding the resistance. It's the takeover of their only resource by U.S./Texas oil companies that's breeding the resistance."
When pressed by the audience, Mr. Nader declined to provide more detail on what immediate steps could be taken to assure stability in the region if the United States withdraws by the end of the year. But he criticized a resolution introduced by the United States and Britain on Monday in the United Nations Security Council, which would support a sovereign interim Iraqi government to take office by June 30. The White House had little credibility in making the proposal, he said, because the administration plans to build military bases in Iraq. '"We are the sovereigns,'" he said, adding that the bases will assure a permanent or long-term occupation. People in Iraq need '"a light at the end of the tunnel,'" he said.
"We don't win when we violate international law, because it simply creates a free-for-all, and the other side is very determined, they're willing to engage in suicide attacks. But our country is very, very vulnerable. If we're seen as a law-breaker instead of a law upholder, which strengthens our moral stature in the world, it endangers our national security."
"Jefferson, Madison, Adams and company had distinct reasons for refusing to lodge this power [to wage war] in the Presidency and instead wanted many legislators in open session to make this awesome decision. They did not want another King George [Bush] emerging with this single-power launching war. Throughout the year 2002, Bush made no secret of his desire to unilaterally overthrow the Iraqi dictatorial regime (called "regime change"). But the opinion polls were unflagging; the American people in sizable majorities did not want the U.S. to go it alone. OK said Mr. Bush; he'll go to the UN and have the Security Council resume a rigorous inspection process in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. The other nations then insisted that if Iraq materially breaches the UN resolution, the U.S. would go back to the Security Council for any further action. Yet Bush made it clear that if the UN did not act, the U.S., and its very few allies, would do so unilaterally.
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Q: Barack Obama stated that if they were what he called 'actionable evidence' and if Mr. Musharraf didn't act, he would act. Don't you think in advance he is stating he is willing to commit a war crime? NADER: Yeah I was surprised he said that, because being a constitutional law specialist, Mr. Obama was in effect saying we are going to violate international law...
“This genocide unfolding before our eyes stands in danger of worsening drastically in coming weeks, if African Union peacekeepers are forced out of the area. But the current situation itself is unconscionable. As you know, the UN Security Council has authorized a plan to send a UN force to Darfur, to supplement the African Union presence and transition to a UN operation. U.S. leadership is needed to turn this plan into reality, especially by persuading other nations to back and immediately implement the plan.”
In an open letter to George W. Bush: "The noble words of your administration and the outside world have not been enough to change the course of the Sudanese government. The United States knows how to deploy its political power and influence. It is now time to put more political muscle behind the effort to end the genocide, and achieve a peaceful solution to this conflict. One leverage point is normalization of relations with the Sudanese government. You and your administration should announce that the United States will not normalize its relationship with Sudan until the Sudanese government removes all obstacles to the full deployment of the multilateral United Nations-African Union peacekeeping operation (UNAMID), fully implements the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and engages in good faith in a comprehensive, open and inclusive peace process in Darfur...Rather than blaming the UN for delays, the United States should exercise leverage to accelerate the deployment of the personnel and resources that would make UNAMID into an effective force, and to overcome the Chinese government's objections to deployment."
Ralph Nader believes the US must stop saber rattling and take up Iran's serious proposal in 2003 to negotiate all outstanding issues between the US and Iran.
Nader weighed in on the escalating tensions between the Israelis & the Palestinians. Due to his Lebanese ancestry, Nader had been dogged by occasional charges of anti-Semitism throughout his career, with whispers that Nader had an innate Arab bias. Never mind that his forbears were Lebanese Christians, a group historically persecuted by Muslims. Furthermore, Nader's campaign position was thoroughly plain vanilla: "It's very simple. Palestinian statehood and security for Israel. Those are the two pivots."
Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon, by Justin Martin, p.253 Sep 1, 2002
"Everybody who knows anything about geopolitical strategy and peace in the world knows that that resolution [two-state system] needs to be subject to a vigorous process by the US government and it isn't."
Nader supports the Green Party platform which includes: "We support the end of the economic blockade of Cuba. Unjust economic coercion by one state against another constitutes a violation of human rights."
Green Party Platform, as ratified at the National Convention Jun 25, 2000
"They [the United Nations] say for $40 billion a year--that's $40 billion--applied to the needy of the world, they can provide basic sanitation and drinking water safety, basic nutritional needs, basic health care and significant education for these children. That's $40 billion a year in the same world that spends $850 billion a year on military equipment."
"Do we wish to expand the definition of national security and national purpose to show how, with reasonable amounts of knowledge, resources and goodwill, we can rapidly begin to defeat the global scourges of poverty, contagious disease, illiteracy, lack of shelter, environmental devastation, and to recognize the genius of Third World peoples to help it flower?"
Nomination Acceptance Speech Jun 25, 2000
"Isn’t it about time that the US government stop supporting dictatorships and avaricious oligarchies with our tax monies, munitions and diplomacy? Isn’t it time that our government takes a cue from numerous studies and model projects, and advances foreign policies that support the peasants and the workers for a change."
Nomination Acceptance Speech Jun 25, 2000
"The promise of the UN, if only sometimes realized, is to serve as an intergovernmental body to advance justice, human rights and sustainable development worldwide. Not long ago, the UN’s Center on Transnational Corporations collected critical data on multinationals and published incisive critiques of growing corporate power. Unfortunately, that same growing corporate power eventually was sufficient to force the closure of the Center on Transnational Corporations, thanks to the demands of the U.S. Now, with the UN permitting itself to become perverted with corporate sponsorships, partnerships and other entanglements, it risks veering down the road of commercialization and marginalization. An effective UN must be free of corporate encumbrances. Its agencies should be the leading critics of the many ways that corporate globalization is functioning to undermine the UN missions to advance ecological sustainability, human rights and global economic justice—not apologists and collaborators with the dominant corporate order."
"In the Public Interest: The United Nations and Big Business", By Ralph Nader, November/December 2000
Nader "also called for replacing U.S. forces with a peace-keeping force from the United Nations - although the U.N. hasn't agreed to such a plan and Nader is in no position to negotiate it."
Ralph Nader has summed up his foreign policy by saying "the United States should be the world's humanitarian superpower. Our foreign policy must redefine the elements of global security, peace, arms control, an end to nuclear weapons…"